Skyparksecure Travel Blog - THE TRAVEL BLOG by Skyparksecure

Bristol airport has unveiled new figures that show International travellers at Bristol Airport have continued to soar in August.

Bristol Airport

The latest figures showed that the overall volume of travellers from Bristol was up almost 1.5% year-on-year. The international travel figures proved to be particularly strong, with numbers up 3.32% compared with the corresponding period last year. It seems soaking up some rays on foreign shores is once again proving popular with UK travellers.

In 2010, seven out of eight months saw more passengers use Bristol Airport when compared to the previous year, with April being the only exception.

Shaun Browne, Aviation Director at Bristol Airport said, “These results follow an announcement by Flybe that it will operate a twice-daily service between Bristol and Belfast City from November.”

In recent months, Bristol Airport has launched a range of new initiatives, easing the travel experience for passengers. A ‘walk through’ tax and duty free store and a new walkway linking the terminal and aircraft stands have already proven their worth with travellers in the UK.

Airport Parking at Bristol with Skypark Secure

South African low-fare airline kulula.com recently came up with a brand-new, funny look for there latest Boeing 737-86N. The plane, called “Flying 101″ is entirely covered with details and funny remarks about the aircraft and how it operates.

Kulula airline attendants onboard also make an effort to make the in-flight “safety lecture” and announcements a bit more entertaining. Here are some real examples that have been heard or reported:

Part of a flight attendant’s arrival announcement:  “We’d like to thank you folks for flying with us today.  And, the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube, we hope you’ll think of Kulula Airways.”

“As you exit the plane, make sure to gather all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants.  Please do not leave children or spouses.”

From a Kulula employee: “Welcome aboard Kulula 271 to Port Elizabeth. To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt; and, if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised.”

“Thank you for flying Kulula. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”

Heard on a Kulula flight: “Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to smoke, the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing. If you can light ‘em, you can smoke ‘em.”

Last week I had a week away in the traditional Spanish fishing town of Garrucha. Garrucha is a beautiful and lively market town which bustles with activity all year round. It is now becoming a very popular tourist destination that still retains much of its original charm and character. One of the really nice parts of Garrucha is it’s 2 km promenade that spans the entire length of the town. Smartly paved and lined with palm trees it is a lovely place to take an evening stroll where you will find delightful areas to sit and relax or watch your children play in the specially designed play areas. The promenade is where you will also find a great selection of coffee bars and restaurants, look out for the fish bars, many will be serving fish caught only hours earlier (seriously recommended). The locals say ‘you can never eat any fish or sea fruit more delicious then in Garrucha’. The famous local catch is the red prawns, which are only caught in this area of the Mediterranean Sea.

We travelled there courtesy of RyanAir. We’ve talked about the ‘Worlds Favourite Airline’ a few times before but I thought they were worth another mention following our trip.

You probably know that with RyanAir flights passengers are required to check-in online no later than 4 hours before their flight, with a £40 per passenger charge waiting for anyone not bright enough to manage to do this properly.

Unfortunately, given that my house had been invaded the night before our journey, the distractions caused me to miss one vital part of the online check-in process; printing out my boarding cards. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

I spoke with a few people and a couple said that they’d almost missed that part as well. All the emails sent out by RyanAir tell you to check-in online but there is no mention of printing boarding cards until on that page.

These are pretty flimsy excuses, granted; but it does feel that RyanAir deliberately try to catch passengers out in order to validate their exhorbitant additional charges. The table below details every charge that RyanAir incurs. In our case, there were 4 adults travelling and given that we opted for priority boarding (complete waste of money by the way), our additional charges came to £29 per person; that’s on top of the flight charge and taxes.

I’m still not convinced that RyanAir are as cheap as they pupport to be – have a look at my previous post on a price comparison between RyanAir and BA.

As an aside, I also noticed that on a shorthaul flight from Liverpool to Spain, RyanAir employed none less than 5 air stewards to pass out menu cards and magazines, serve drinks 5 times, serve food twice, scratch cards once, ‘duty free’ twice and then of course go around collecting every bit of rubbish, every magazine and menu card to make the flight turnaround as quick as possible. Clearly these guys are the hardest working air stewards in the world – and it showed!

A recent survey by Lastminute.com found that almost 75% of holidaymakers plan to travel with much lighter luggage or even resort to travelling with hand luggage alone.

40% of holidaymakers are also confused by charges handed down by airlines, with 1 in 5 saying they had been caught out by new stict regulations imposed by airlines.

As many would expect, Ryanair charge the most to check in bags.

The information below shows the prices currently charged by budget airlines.

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Are cheap airlines really cheap?

Manchester Airport are installing spy cameras that check registration numbers at their car parks after a huge surge in customers sneaking out of their car parks without paying.

In one hour alone, staff spotted 27 drivers ‘tailgating’ behind other vehicles in order to get through the barrier without paying the £27 a day fee.

Some drivers are going away for two weeks and not paying a penny for their parking.

Manchester Airport made £51 million in 2008 – 2009 from parking fees and see this as a big threat to their income. To combat the problem they’ve teamed up with Parking Eye who track every car going in and out of the car park and every driver exiting the car park without paying will have to pay a £90 fee.

The airport are adamant that they’re not trying to punish customers, but rather ”to stop those motorists who park their cars on our premises and leave without paying the tariff for their stay. We want to be fair to all drivers parking at the airport so these new measures are aimed only at rogue drivers.

“This new project will allow us to spot them and ensure our parking charges remain consistent without hiking up the price for all. We want to provide the best parking facilities for legitimate customers and the parking regulations are clearly displayed at the entrances around the car parks,” said Sarah Barrett from the airport.

Our most recent email contained a full complement of awful football cliches – add your favourite / most hated football cliches by adding a comment to this post!

Don’t forget you can get your World Cup Airport Parking at www.worldcup2010parking.com from SkyParkSecure.

Despite the huge disruption caused by the volcanic ash and BA strikes, it has been a busy couple of months for airlines adding new routes to their existing services.

Ryanair announced their 42nd base at Barcelona El Prat which will help to secure over 2000 jobs in the area.

Jet2 have added Leeds Bradford to Bodrum (Turkey) and Tunisia and a host of new destinations and prices from Edinburgh.

Edinburgh to Palma (Majorca) fm £39.99 one way inc. taxes starting the 17th May 2011
Edinburgh to Faro fm £34.99 one way inc. taxes running from Winter through to Summer 2011
Edinburgh to Ibiza fm £34.99 one way inc. taxes from 26th May
Edinburgh to Mahon fm £39.99 one way inc. taxes starting 27th May
Edinburgh to Murcia fm £34.99 one way inc. taxes starting 31st May

EasyJet have increased their flights from London Gatwick to now include more regular flights to Bodrum, Dalaman, Split, Mykonos, Montpellier and Toulouse. Perhaps more excitingly they have also made Starbucks coffee available on selected flights.

Finally, not one to left out in the Polish cold, Wizz Air have announced new routes from London Luton, now flying to Split, Dubrovnik and Venice Treviso. They have also changed their baggage allowance to up to 32kg per person.

Dean Pailing presents Len Curtis with cheque for £5886

Following the herioc efforts of our 10k running team, we were delighted to meet Len at Donna’s Dream House and present him with a hearty cheque for £5886.

The money will go directly into the fund for the new Bereavement and Resource Centre that is currently in development at the House.

A few of us who completed the run went to meet Len and have a look around the houses. To say we were blown away by the incredible work done by Len and his team would be an understatement to say the least.

Donna’s Dream House offers children suffering with life threatening illnesses, and their families, a break from day-to-day life and gives them the chance to relax away from home, in a friendly environment and create some happy memories for children and their familes that are suffering so immensely.

As well as each family having their own ‘apartment’, there is a fabulous garden area to the rear of the house. Volunteers from The Prince’s Trust took up the challenge of designing and constructing the barbecue patio area, and there are even some huge flowers donated by the Illuminations Department. There’s a car park, and possibly the most poignant room of the house, is a pretty wooden chapel-like quiet room, set on its own grounds.  Soft music plays on entry; there are poems of remembrance and other beautiful features. This is “where children can be laid to rest, or parents can go to scream” Len explains, with honesty born of experience. The next phase of the house is to build a bereavement centre, where parents and relatives can go to be with others in similar situations – for help, or guidance or even just to let off steam.

We were priviledged to meet Len and have since decided to keep the option on our web site to enable our customers to continue donating to this hugely worthwhile cause.

Thank you so much to those of you who contributed to the fund. Len made it very clear that every penny that goes into the fund goes straight to providing these children with memories that they’ll never forget. Thank you.

Check this out – it is an incredible visualisation of UK and European airspace returning to normal following the disruption caused by the ash cloud. Enjoy.

Airspace Rebooted from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

We’re hearing some terrible stories of people travelling for 48 hours plus to get home, but we’ve also heard the odd story of people who have really landed on their feet because of the ash cloud.

One customer told us how they are stuck in Tenerife but have been upgraded to a very plush suite for a further 10 days in the sun. Not too shabby!

Leave us a comment with your stories, good or bad and we’ll publish the best ones.